His jaw tightens. “Yes.”
I stare at him. “So you know what happened.”
“I felt it,” he admits. “And I recognize the route.”
“You recognize it,” I repeat, anger sharpening. “Meaning you knew there was history there, and you let me walk into it without warning.”
His expression is controlled, but I feel the faint edge of guilt under it.
“I should have told you,” he says.
“You should have trusted me with it,” I snap. “That’s the difference.”
Silence stretches. He doesn’t deny it.
That night,the fire burns low. The chambers are quiet, but quiet means nothing when the bond keeps turning the air between us into something crowded and intimate.
I sit on the edge of the bed, staring at my hands as if they belong to someone else. Zeidan stands near the hearth, arms folded, posture rigid, as if he relaxes for a moment the world might collapse. I do not want to fight anymore. I am exhausted.
“I feel your pain,” I say softly.
He goes still. Not the obvious pain of injuries or bruises. The other pain. The one he carries so carefully that he forgets other people can sense it now. The strain of Velcryn’s expectations. The constant calculation. The memory of betrayal that sits in his chest like a scar.
His voice is low. “You shouldn’t.”
“But I do,” I say. “And you feel mine. So we can either keep pretending the bond is only strategy, or we can acknowledge that it is changing the way we function.”
He turns his head slightly, black eyes catching the firelight. “It doesn’t change what must be done.”
“I know,” I say. “That’s why I’m telling you now, in private, instead of letting it leak out in front of my mother or your Matrons.”
A faint flicker crosses his expression, something that might be appreciation if he allowed himself to own it.
“I trust you,” I say quietly. “More than I intended to. More than is convenient. And I want to give you something that makes you stop looking at me like I am a risk waiting to turn.”
His gaze sharpens. “Amelia?—”
“No,” I interrupt, voice steady. “Let me finish. I understand why you don’t trust easily. I understand that you were betrayed. You keep carrying it like proof of what happens when you loosen your grip.”
His jaw tightens again.
“I want you to trust me,” I say. “Not because the bond forces it. Not because Nytheria needs it. Because it makes us stronger. Because if we keep withholding pieces of ourselves, we will keep stepping on landmines neither of us warned the other about.”
Silence. Then, finally, he exhales.
“There was someone,” he says.
The words are simple, but the way he says them shifts the temperature in the room.
“A lover?” I ask carefully.
His gaze stays on the fire. “Yes.”
My throat tightens.
“She was a Purna,” he continues, voice controlled. “Ambitious. Brilliant. She knew how to stand beside me in court and how to speak in ways that made people listen.”
“And she betrayed you,” I say, because I feel it in him even before he confirms it.
